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Baldwin Street, the steepest street in the world

Located in the city of Dunedin, in southern New Zealand, the Baldwin Street has earned the distinction of being the steepest street in the world. This 350 meters long street begins with a moderate slope and then climbs steeply to reach a maximum slope of 1:2.86 or 19 degrees! The street is so steep that it's surface had to be laid with concrete instead of asphalt otherwise on a warm day the tar would flow down the slope!

I have seen it, it is steep and is regarded as the steepest. It came about because the planning was done in scotland and then overlaid onto the area making this street go up a steep incline, and there it is.

We have streets this steep, if not STEEPER in Iowa. One of the ones downtown here has stairs instead of a sidewalk due to this. We get a lot of snow and ice in the winter, imagine driving on that when it's covered in ice and snow!

"...the Guinness Book officially recognizes Baldwin Street as the world's steepest street at a 35% grade. Canton Avenue, in the Pittsburgh neighbourhood of Beechview, may be steeper; it is officially measured to be a 37% grade."

I am an American and I want you to know that we have the steepest and longest streets in the world. The street I live on is actually so steep that everything is upside down!Yea for us Americans, we can never be outdone!

I think the real test of steepness is not grade, but the willingness of people driving high-center-of-gravity vehicles to park at right angles on the street.

On the aforementioned block of 22nd Street in San Francisco (btw Church and Vicksburg), there are always vans parked at 90 degrees. (They look as if you could topple them with with a nudge, but they're there, and you never hear about any of them tumbling downward.) So that block must not really be "steep."

(It does scare the crap out of visitors when I drive them down it though...)

I love Pittsburgh...can't wait to go home. A famous photographer (can't remember name) once said he loved taking photos of the women of Pittsburgh because they had the most beautiful legs from walking all those hills. Obviously this was from a long time ago, before everyone became couch potatoes....In Pittsburgh you learn to turn the front wheels of vehicles into the sidewalk when parking just in case the brakes fail so it doesn't roll down the street!

New Zealand gets it name from the explorer Able Tasman who was born in the province of Zeeland in Netherlands. Although he was the first European to see NZ he thought it was part of Australia, and it wasn't until Captain James Cook charted the pacific the the region on Tasman's charts was identified as separate islands.

People often think of San Francisco for its steep streets, but not many people realize that the steepest streets in Los Angeles are steeper than any in San Francisco. Edlred Street has a 33 degree grade. There is a street in San Pedro that's even slightly steeper. The steepest street in San Francisco is 31 degrees. Of course Pittsburgh's steepest beats them all. I wonder what the grade of this street in New Zealand is?

Gathering the facts presented and independantly researched, there are two streets that stand out as the "steepest": - Baldwin Street (in New Zealand mentioned in the article) and - Canton Avenue (in Pittsburgh mentioned in this blog).

Canton Avenue is indeed steeper at a gradient of 37 percent HOWEVER is hardly 50 meters in length.

Baldwin Avenue has a 31 percent gradient and is 350 METERS IN LENGTH!!!

There are streets all over the World that are as steep as Baldwin and that lame excuse Canton (at 50 meters in length it's more like a driveway than a road !). Has anyone heard of the Tour De France ? Well stage 16 of the 2008 TDF (col-du-grand-saint-bernard) is a 40km hell ride reaching a peak of 2400 meters (twice)See link:http://www.cycling-challenge.com/col-du-grand-saint-bernard/

no one will read this, but (1) there are 2 streets in Dunedin that are steeper than the steepest street in San Fransisco. Baldwin street is one of them(2) the Guiness book of records moved the 'award' for the steepest street from San Fransisco to Dunedin's baldin street(3) if you think that New Zealand is in the USA then you are one dumb motherfucker.